By Mahlon Meyer
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Twin press conferences on Tuesday underscored community outrage over crime and violence in South Seattle and beyond, including in the Chinatown-International District (CID). Coming on the heels of a mass shooting in Rainier Valley, robberies on Beacon Hill and surrounding communities, and an overflowing of drug use in the CID, community leaders and residents gathered almost simultaneously in Little Saigon and on Beacon Hill to demand action.
“We’ve heard the mantra of ‘invest in community,’ but it’s no longer enough. This slogan, when devoid of actionable steps, actually leaves our communities further behind,” said community advocate Tanya Woo, as she spoke at the intersection of 12th Avenue and Jackson Street, a spot of heightened criminal activity. “We need concrete plans, immediate interventions that uplift businesses and provide security for families.”
Seattle City Councilmember Sara Nelson, Esther Lucero, president and CEO of the Seattle Indian Health Board, and Quynh Pham, executive director of Friends of Little Saigon also spoke at the press conference.
Nelson said she was supporting Woo in order to shore up votes for public safety on the council.
“It takes five votes to get anything done,” she said. “I need backup. Otherwise, nothing is going to happen, nothing is going to change.”
Lucero shared concerns over public safety but said they must be tempered by an understanding of the history of the struggles faced by minority communities.
“I do understand the need to clean up downtown to attract new business and generate revenue, but it cannot be at the expense of our community organizations and small businesses, especially communities of color,” she said.
Pham said small businesses and property owners were in a desperate plight: drug use and crime is emptying out the neighborhood.
“Criminal activity, from drug dealing and drug use, right in front of their storefronts,” she told KIRO 7 News, meant that small businesses have “had to increase security. They’ve lost staff, they’ve lost customers.”
Without immediate remedy, the neighborhood is almost already lost, she said.
“They can’t keep hanging around waiting for improvements. They can only invest so much, and they’ve lost a lot already,” she said.
Meanwhile, business owners in Little Saigon largely expressed despair, with property owners saying fewer and fewer tenants were willing to rent storefronts.
Sea Mar, who rents space to businesses, said the city needed to use a law enforcement approach to solving the drug crisis.
“Until the city strengthens its laws and changes how it deals with the drugs and the drug addicts, we’re not going to really be able to fix the problem,” she told KIRO 7 News.
Woo, who is running for city council, said, “We can’t ignore the harsh truth—these increasingly violent crimes disproportionately impact Black, brown, and Asian community members. These communities bear the brunt. It’s time to recognize this disparity and demand change.”
Like other events in recent years, the twin press conferences were home-spun, reflecting the concerns of community members who had grown up in these areas and continue to fight for them.
Nevertheless, they appealed to themes that touch on every resident in the city, from the most marginalized to the increasingly vulnerable.
This seemed reflected in calls for solidarity.
“Over the past four years, crime rates have surged in our city. It’s a problem that not only affects our security but reaches deeply into the fabric of our neighborhoods,” said Woo.
A sad common sentiment
Across town, in South Beacon Hill, one hour later, community groups and residents gathered in Benefit Playground Park calling for solidarity in response to an explosion of robberies, home invasions, and other violence against businesses and residents.
“We need to offer hope. Hope for safer places. Hope for opportunities to thrive,” said Don Cameron, executive director of Seattle Cares Mentoring and the 4C Coalition.
A crowd of nearly a hundred residents and community leaders stood around a wooden shelter in the park listening to speeches and sharing stories.
Many expressed outrage that over a dozen robberies had occurred recently, when a group of teenagers attacked mostly Asian senior citizens outside their homes or forced their way inside, using violence to grab valuables—and there had been no arrests made to date.
One of the victims, Dat Cao, was scheduled to speak. Cao was threatened with a pistol then tased, even after he submitted to the robbers’ demands, leaving him gasping and choking on his porch. At the last minute, however, he told organizers he was too scared to speak out.
Community leaders decried the atmosphere of fear created in the wake of the violence.
“We are probably being targeted based on the stereotype that we’re quiet, we don’t fight back, we’re weak, and so forth, which is absolutely the opposite. If we don’t interrupt it at this point, those who are traumatized, who are afraid, will further go into very difficult emotional spaces if we don’t show them a lot of support, a lot of coming out and very concrete actions,” Maria Batayola, who chairs the Beacon Hill Council, told KOMO 4 News. “Some of our folks come from countries where interacting with government is scary. It could be dangerous for them to interact, so the rest of us have to lift the voices and really create this pathway and persevere.”
Willon Lew, longtime resident of Beacon Hill and an organizer of the event, said, “We stand in solidarity with everyone, and we don’t want situations like this to be ‘normalized.’”
Sofia Aragon, mayor of Burien, who was present at the event, said many of the people who had come together had lived in the area for many years, and that she knew their families from when she grew up and went to school in South Seattle.
“It was nice to see people with deep roots in the community,” she told the Northwest Asian Weekly. “But there was a sad common sentiment across the speakers that it was not the same place we had grown up in.”
Aragon is also a candidate for King County Council District 8.
“Public safety is one of the critical jobs of the city and the county,” she said. “And only the city and the county can do it.”
Heading to City Hall
After the events ended, participants planned to head to City Hall to make public comments. It was during sessions of the Seattle City Council and the King County Council that Woo and others last year led hundreds of CID residents to demand protection and investment from the city and county against the spate of troubles that are overwhelming the neighborhood—and South Seattle.
According to Lau, who initiated community activism against Sound Transit’s plans to build a transit hub in the center of the CID on 5th Avenue, Woo’s presence at both rallies, first as a speaker, then as a supporter, shows that deep roots in the community can propel activism.
Hanh says
Where is Tammy Morales in all of this? Has she said or done anything about our problems? Where are those 11k of you that voted for her in the primary despite her inability to do anything for her community? A big part of her district on her watch is dangerous and dirty, no excuses for this, she should be accountable. You aren’t put in charge of an area to pass the blame when things are bad and take credit for only the good.
Betty Lau says
The eating up of our CID businesses by crime is emblematic of the city’s disinterest and disinvestment. The disinvestment continues with the Sound Transit board decision to throw hundreds of millions of our taxpayer dollars at stations that bypass Chinatown, Japantown and Little Saigon, diverting not only access to light rail but also future economic beneifts to a new neighborhood for a wealthy landowner and for a civic campus that won’t be for us.